


Every Blade Of Grass Bears Our Mark

by FuryBeam136



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game), The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Connor is not an android, Crossover, Hurt/Comfort, Tags will be updated as the story progresses, Unless I forget, but he isnt human either per se
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2020-08-13 08:53:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20171560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FuryBeam136/pseuds/FuryBeam136
Summary: “You aren’t supposed to be here,” the old man says.“I know,” is all Connor can think to respond with.(BOTW but with a few characters from DBH just existing in this world)





	1. You'll Feel Better When You Wake Up

_“Open your eyes.”_

He does, albeit slowly, uncertainly. He feels like this is something he isn’t supposed to hear. Like he isn’t the one being addressed.

_“Wake up, Link.”_

He can’t remember anything. Is that his name? It doesn’t feel like it is. It feels like it’s the name of someone he should know. But he doesn’t know anyone. Maybe he did, but now he can’t seem to recall.

He hears movement. It’s not him. He heaves himself upright to see a blond man with wide blue eyes, and there’s just something so _familiar_ about him.

_“Link…”_

The blond reacts to the voice and he feels like he’s intruding, like he shouldn’t hear.

_“You have been asleep for the past 100 years.”_

He turns away from the blond- Link, clearly- and frowns. He is out of place here.

_“The man beside you is Connor.”_ He blinks. The name feels right. Connor. He is Connor. “He’s here to help you. Though I suppose he might be just as lost as you are…”

Why can Connor hear this? He definitely shouldn’t be able to. But he can. And it’s strange.

Link’s eyes lock onto Connor’s and Connor immediately shrinks back. He looks away from the blond, feels uncomfortable with all of this. He doesn’t know who he is. Does Link remember anything? He doesn’t know. He knows nothing.

The voice guides Link and Connor stands awkwardly beside the basin he awoke in, trying not to think about the sheer emptiness of his mind. Link lays a carefully folded shirt and pants beside Connor. He thinks he can read concern in the blond’s eyes but it’s hard to be sure.

The clothes fit well. Too well, Connor thinks. He wants to be able to hide in them and they are definitely not doing that for him. They’re threadbare and old and they scratch against his skin uncomfortably. They cling to his body, just barely, but enough to cause him discomfort.

Connor doesn’t like this situation. He doesn’t say a word about it though. Link gestures for Connor to follow. He has no other option. He steps toward the exit.

The world stretches out before him and Connor itches to explore every inch of it. His mind whirls with the possibility of so many things. He is excited. He stands in the fresh air and lets it caress his skin. It feels right. And yet, it feels awful.

Something hangs thick and heavy in the air, and Connor finds it bothersome. Link seems completely unbothered. Connor doesn’t get how.

He doesn’t really know what other choice he has, so Connor keeps following Link.

Their first human interaction is Link stealing a baked apple from an old man, to Connor’s dismay and embarrassment. Fortunately, the man is fine with it. In his presence, Connor feels… something. Some energy radiating from him.

The old man offers them a torch as well, which Link gladly takes. Connor is worried that this will not work out in the future. If Link keeps taking things… well, that might not end well.

The voice guides Link further. Connor just follows. Which he regrets almost immediately after, when they reach a slot for the Sheikah Slate and the blond places it there. The ground shakes and then shoots upward, and Connor grips the pedestal tightly.

He quickly discovers he is not fond of being high up.

While Link seems perfectly comfortable with the situation, even stepping towards the edge, Connor stands in the center of the tower he’s found himself standing on and just tries to breathe. Because suddenly breathing has become somewhat of a challenge.

Vague images flash briefly behind Connor’s eyes. Falling. Nothing else. Nothing concrete enough to be a full memory. Just the sensation of falling and the grip of fear.

Link starts climbing down and Connor takes breaths as deep and even as he can manage. He’s going to need to follow Link. There’s nowhere else for him to go.

He’s sweating so intensely he thinks he might lose his grip from the moisture, but Connor manages to get to the ground, where he sits at the base of the tower trying to catch his breath. Link seems to think it’s from exertion.

The old man offers them a paraglider for some treasure hidden in ancient ruins across the Great Plateau. He leads them to the first set of ruins and Connor stares for a long moment.

Something about the ruins feels strange to him. His hand rests on the stone and he feels it hum beneath his fingertips, as if alive. The thrum of energy so familiar yet so foreign to Connor.

Link presses the Sheikah Slate to a pedestal outside and the energy flares. Connor stumbles backwards. There is something most definitely alive within this structure. Dormant, but alive.

There’s a round platform in the center of the tiny building. Link steps onto it and it glows, and then sinks into the ground. Connor tries to follow, but a column of energy has formed around it and it’s painful to push through.

He resigns himself to waiting. The old man has disappeared, and Connor wonders where he went. There’s something strange about him. He hasn’t even told them his name and yet he acts as if they know him.

Connor doesn’t know if he likes the old man, but it doesn’t matter. There’s no one else here to help them.

He sits with his feet in the water around the old shrine. It feels gentle and cool against his skin. The air brushes against him and he takes a deep breath. The heaviness in the air hasn’t lessened. It hasn’t worsened either, however. Connor counts his blessings, as few as they are.

A fish brushes against Connor’s foot, unbothered by its presence. He looks down at it and furrows his brow. There’s something about fish that taunts him, brushes against things in the back of his mind but never quite pulls them into view.

Link comes out of the shrine and immediately starts tapping at something on the Sheikah Slate. Before Connor can ask what he’s doing, Link has fired a beam of energy at a chest sitting below the water. It lifts up and out and sets itself down at link’s feet and Connor feels something radiating from the Sheikah Slate as this happens.

“Can I…?” Connor trails off, but Link seems to understand. He hands the slate to Connor and points out the new function he unlocked within the shrine. Connor reaches to touch it and… hesitates.

There’s so much energy coming from the Sheikah Slate. And Connor doesn’t know why but he can feel it as if it were a tangible thing.

He presses into it based on an instinct he doesn’t understand. And then energy leaps from the slate and Connor gasps, drops it on the soft grass and tries to sort out the strange feeling in his body.

Eventually he picks up the slate again, though the energy from it is a lot less intense. It’s still almost tangible, but it feels less overwhelming.

Connor taps the magnet icon Link pointed out, but nothing happens for a long moment. Link seems just as confused by this as Connor is, but it’s hard to really tell. Connor gives the slate back to Link. Something feels different but he doesn’t know _what._

They keep moving. There are three more shrines to find, and Link is taught to use his slate to teleport. Connor chooses to wait at the bottom of the tower as Link unravels in strands of blue energy, floating up to the top. It doesn’t look safe. Yet Connor can feel that it is. He waits at the base of the tower for Link to return with the location of the three shrines they have yet to find.

The old man gets to Connor before Link returns.

“You aren’t supposed to be here,” the old man says.

“I know,” is all Connor can think to respond with. Because he does know he’s not supposed to be here. The voice that’s been guiding Link since they woke up seemed to expect him, and yet she had seemed so unsure about him. And the shrine opened for Link, and Link alone. “It was just supposed to be Link, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” the old man nods. “And yet here you are.”

“I don’t think I want to be here,” Connor admits.

“None of us do,” is the solemn reply. “None of us do.”

“You aren’t supposed to be here either,” Connor points out. “I don’t… you feel different. I can’t make sense of it but there is something _wrong_ with the way I… sense you.”

“Is that so?” The old man leans thoughtfully on his staff, and Connor swears the lantern hanging from it flickers a blue-green colour for just a moment. “Well. you’re certainly perceptive. Maybe that’s why you’re here.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t _remember,_ and that _bothers_ me. There’s something important I should be remembering but I _can’t,_ why can’t I remember…?”

“Maybe it was important, once. But the last time you were awake was one hundred years ago, was it not?” The old man gestures to the world around them with a sweep of his staff. “Things change all the time. And one hundred years is long enough for a lot of things to change. Long enough for a man to change.”

There’s a heaviness to the man’s voice that wasn’t there before, and Connor feels there’s something more to what he said than what he understands. The look in the old man’s eyes is regretful, and Connor stares at them for a long moment before speaking again.

“You have regrets,” is all he says.

“More than you could imagine,” comes the response.

After a long moment of comfortable silence staring over the edge of the Great Plateau, the old man walks away. When Connor turns to watch him go, he’s already gone.

A wisp of blue-green light descends slowly, and Connor catches it gently in cupped hands. If dances and flickers a moment longer, and then it fades.

A hand falls on Connor’s shoulder. He looks up, and sees concern in Link’s clear blue eyes.

There are tears on Connor’s cheeks. He doesn’t know when he started crying, nor does he know why. But with Link standing here and stretching his arms out wide, Connor finds himself burying himself in the warmth of the blond’s body and sobbing.

He can feel some barrier break between them. Something imperceptible and perhaps not really there, but it’s gone, whatever it was, and it lets warmth flood into Connor’s suddenly aching bones and that’s all he can ask for right now.

Link sits stoic and still, a shoulder to lean on. And that’s more than Connor really feels he deserves.


	2. Your world’s not all it seems

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The sun begins to set. There’s something terrifying about the night. The heaviness in the air is thicker. Connor thinks perhaps something might kill him out here and Link might never know.

The next shrine they find is much like the first, only it is located in the middle of crumbling walls and the husks of great machines. One of them seems to stir awake at Link and Connor’s approach, though Link is able to react unnervingly quickly and reflect the creature’s laser blasts back at it with a piece of old wood he’s been using as a shield. Connor just stares for a long moment as Link pick up and tucks away a few of the machine’s remains, before following at the blond’s gesture.

The shrine itself was definitely built to be identical to the other one. The way time has affected its walls differs, but the construction itself, and even the intricate spiralling patterns are the same. Like the first shrine, it opens only for Link. Like the first shrine, something dormant dwells within.

Connor sits outside the shrine, leans against the corpse of a mechanical beast, and thinks. He thinks for a long time. He thinks about the strange energy he seemed to absorb from the Shiekah Slate and the way Link was able to effortlessly lift the chest out of the water without even touching it. He thinks about the voice he wasn’t supposed to hear. He thinks about the feelings screaming in the back of his mind behind walls of blank amnesia and tries to understand them. Connor thinks about a lot of things. But he learns nothing new.

There is no lake with fish to brush at his toes here. There is no old man to speak to, though Connor isn’t sure he wants to speak to him right now. There is nothing but crumbling stone walls and broken shells of things that once imitated life. Nothing but echoes of a past Connor doesn’t know. He wants to know. But there is no one to tell him.

He envies Link. The voice speaks to him, and him alone. Connor can hear her, sure, but she is not addressing him. She probably does not even know he can hear her. She’ll never speak his name the same way she speaks Link’s anyway. Her voice is fond and gentle, loving, guiding. No one will guide Connor. No one will love Connor.

He isn’t sure where that thought came from, but it assaults him like a parasite eating away at his insides. He’s just an interloper forcing his way into something he has no business messing with, and the world won’t love him for that. No, no one will love him for it.

The sun begins to set. There’s something terrifying about the night. The heaviness in the air is thicker. Connor thinks perhaps something might kill him out here and Link might never know. Or perhaps the blond would find Connor’s body, bloody and broken, lying outside the shrine in a gruesome display made by monsters to honour whatever dark god they serve. Or maybe there would be nothing left of Connor but bloodied bones picked clean by creatures hungering for flesh.

Connor has never thought this deeply about death before. At least, not since waking up. The night shouldn’t be so dark and yet Connor can hear screams of pain on the edges of the world and images flash behind his eyes, not memories, not his, at least. Memories of this place. Of an attempt to protect someone important, and of the failure to do so. All as vague as feelings and images and a desperate desire to run, to get help.

As suddenly as it all began, it stops.

And then the walls are tall and fortified, soldiers march about the room, relaxed, too relaxed. Idle chatter and smiling and he watches it all from the eye of a huge mechanical marvel in the center of the room, on display for the world to see. It stands idle and glows faint blue and orange.

So suddenly Connor can’t begin to grasp it, there are explosions at the outer walls. Soldiers stand ready and rush to fight, but the threat is one of their own machines.

Connor watches, but cannot stop it. It has already happened. It is in the past. The walls crumble and men fight for their lives, and for the life of someone in the heart of the fortress. Doorways collapse, machines are struck down slowly, and yet the men are falling faster than Connor can watch. Blasts of bright blue tear holes through man after man. Their captain fights, but isn’t strong enough. Screamed prayers to a goddess that doesn’t seem to listen echo through the chaos.

He closes his eyes to shut it all out. When he opens them, everything is crumbling and ancient once more, and he stands trembling in front of a collapsed stone archway. Connor steps toward the machine in the center of the area- a Guardian, a voice on the edge of hearing tells him- and carefully grasps the ancient spear driven through its eye. He pulls it out slowly, reverently, and stares at what seems to be a dull rod of old metals and stone.

It is not a weapon Connor has ever seen before, that he is aware of, but it feels right in his hands. As if someone is guiding him, showing him where to hold the handle and how to balance its weight. Connor feels shreds of life clinging to the spear, as if its past owner dwells within.

The sounds of shifting earth cause Connor to whip around to face three skeletons of creatures twisted by darkness. They hold rusted weapons which Connor knows could cause more complications than just bleeding if they cut him. Connor closes his eyes and feels the spear in his hands, reaches for the energy that clings to it.

Blue light flares from the edge of the rod, and Connor opens his eyes to swing it at the closest skeleton. The thing falls apart as the edge of the blade strikes it, and Connor is quick to drive the point home by driving his spear through the still moving skull. It shrieks horribly and then dissolves into black energy that floats away into the night, leaving the weapon free to be swung back around to hit the next skeleton to approach.

When the final skull is being absolutely shattered by the end of the spear’s handle being driven through it, Link comes out of the shrine. Connor doesn’t need to turn around to know there’s confusion all over Link’s face.

“They came out of the ground,” is the only explanation Connor can offer. “I dealt with them.”

There are clearly questions Link still wants to ask, but the blond remains silent as the night fills with distant howls and jeers. There are monsters everywhere by night, Connor quickly discovers. Skeletons rise from the ground in packs to attack them. Connor shows no mercy in driving his spear through each and every one that dares come too close to him.

Link is more than capable of defending himself as well, Connor notes. The blond wields an old blade as naturally as he breathes, and Connor can’t help watching. Monsters either cower or grow enraged at the blond’s approach, and Connor feels nothing but frustration over it. There’s something special about Link, and there’s nothing special about Connor except memories of a time long past that aren’t even his own, might not even be real.

Connor clenches his fists around his spear and the light that serves as the blade grows brighter for just a moment.

He takes a deep breath to calm himself. He’s okay. He’s capable of defending himself. He doesn’t rely on Link. He doesn’t.

Link tries to let him use the Sheikah Slate, with the new bomb icons. Connor once again can’t activate it, but once again the energy seems to flow into him with a harsh strength. He gives it back to Link and sighs. Link looks sad. Connor feels guilty.

The next shrine is atop a cliffside, and Connor stays at the bottom. There a small house nearby, and he decides to investigate. The old man is there, sitting by a pot and occasionally stirring its contents.

“Connor,” the old man greets him with a nod. “Would you like some stew? It’s nothing too special, but it’s food.”

“I’m not hungry,” Connor says. “Thank you for the offer.”

“Have you eaten anything since you woke up?” The old man has genuine concern written on his face. “I wouldn’t want you to starve.”

“No,” Connor admits, “but I really don’t think I could eat something right now.”

At the old man’s insistence, Connor eventually accepts a few bottles of stew. He plans on handing them off to Link. They sit in silence by the fire until Connor grows bored and enters the small house. He finds a journal and leafs through it halfheartedly, finding entries about recipes and food that staves off the cold. Connor suspects he and Link are going to need some sooner or later.

There is a note there that if someone could figure out a recipe the old man has forgotten, he would give them a warm doublet. Connor doesn’t think he knows how to cook, but the missing ingredient is so easy to deduce that he assumes this is just a way to give the doublet to Link. It’s not his place to interfere with that, so he doesn’t. He makes a mental note to ask about it, though.

There are hot peppers piled on a table in the corner, and some firewood piled underneath. It surprises Connor somewhat that the old man could gather such an amount of wood, but with the amount of strange things about him Connor can’t exactly say he’s too shocked. Just suspicious, mostly. And what about the old man hasn’t made him suspicious? The simple answer is nothing. But it’s really not that simple. Nothing is that simple, it would seem. Maybe some things are simple, but they’re so few and far between that they’re barely worth thinking about. So he doesn’t think about it. He moves on.

He does spot the warm doublet, folded neatly and laid on a chair. He’ll give the old man credit, he’s got a pretty organized place at the very least. Maybe not to an outside observer, but Connor knows how to pick out the patterns within the chaos. He doesn’t know why or how. And that bothers him. Because he can’t remember how he knows any of the things he knows, he just knows them. It’s frustrating. But he doesn’t have any way of remembering.

He grows frustrated, but he doesn’t know what to do about it. So he sits and tends to the fire and just waits, waits until the moon and stars are high in the sky and his body grows too heavy to stay upright.

As his eyes flutter shut, he sees golden light streak across the sky.


	3. Just to Prove the World was Here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Link takes Connor by the hand with a gentle smile, and with a few taps to the Sheikah slate, the two are floating, the only sensation Connor can properly identify being that of Link’s hand in his. Link’s hand is soft, but calloused. This is the hand of a man who has fought his entire life, the hand of a man more at home with a sword in his hand.
> 
> Connor is envious that Link knows where his place is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again to whoever the hell is reading this~
> 
> I have managed to return to this because I just picked up botw again!!! And I thought of this fic and went "ah i gotta finish it" so here we are! Note that I have made a few very tiny changes to the last chapter, just for continuity reasons. There's a small change I made to my plans for this fic and I just needed to fix the continuity of things. Feel free to reread the last chapters anyway because I know I would've forgotten half the plot by now if I wasn't the author lol

Connor is woken by Link. He should have expected it really, but he didn’t, somehow. He’s rested more than long enough. It’s time for them to move on.

Link shows him the new function on the Sheikah Slate. Stasis. It freezes an item in time. Again, he tries to let Connor use it. Again, the slate rejects him. Link is clearly feeling guilty about that, and Connor waves it off. It bothers him, sure, but it’s not Link’s fault. Nothing is Link’s fault. Link is perfect and Connor is jealous but that’s not Link’s fault either. He almost finds himself wishing that just one thing would happen that is Link’s fault, just to make him feel better about himself.

Connor takes out his spear as another group of monsters attack them. He spares them none of his frustration, driving his blade right through them. Link is still a step ahead of him, and damn it all but Connor wants to be able to keep up with him.

The final shrine turns out to be atop a mountain, the same mountain with the cliff that Link climbed earlier. It’s cold up there. Connor doesn’t like the cold. It seeps into his bones and makes him shake from more than just the lack of heat. He feels frightened by it. He can’t remember why.

Link takes pity on him, and hands him the warm doublet he must have claimed from the old man back at his hut. Connor tries in vain to refuse the offer. Link is set on keeping Connor warm, even if he suffers in the process. It feels nice, and yet it hurts. Connor should be able to take care of himself. He doesn’t need help, not from Link, not from the old man, not from _anyone._

Connor still can’t enter the shrine, so he sets his focus to looking it over instead. Ancient runes litter the surface of the door bars. He wonders what they are for just the briefest of moments, tracing his hand across their engraved surface. Letters, he realizes. How he came to the conclusion, he isn’t sure. Letters, and the word they spell… Dungeon. He sighs his frustration, stepping away from the shrine to pace, desperate to keep the cold at bay.

Dungeon. Over and over again, repeating across each bar that formed the door. Why does he know? Why can he read the ancient engravings as though they were in plain modern print? Did he learn this somewhere, before he was placed in the Shrine of Resurrection? It bothers him, and he fights his urge to scream for fear it will draw monsters to him.

The trial within the shrine must be a simple one, for Link exits quickly. He once again holds the slate out to Connor. Connor once again fails to activate the rune. He once again gets the strange feeling of something being absorbed. He’s about to say something he’ll probably regret, when he hears a shout from somewhere above them.

The old man glides down to them from the heavens above, and he speaks with that damned solemnity of his. He speaks cryptically as ever, tells them to meet him where the lines drawn between shrines would cross on the map. And then, before Connor can say a word, the man dissipates into the air, flickering blue-green flames dancing around him only to fade moments after the man himself does. The flames dance around Connor and Link a moment longer, before vanishing completely.

“Show me your map,” Connor demands, and Link obliges, pulling out the Sheikah slate and pointing out the shrine icons to Connor. “There. That’s where they cross.” He taps a spot on the map, which Link is able to zoom in on with a swipe of his fingers across the screen.

Though not so clear on the map, there is a large building in that spot. Connor is able to infer the building easily. The crumbling temple at the center of the plateau is where the old man waits for them. There’s something about that building. For some unknown reason, Connor finds himself dreading going there.

Link takes Connor by the hand with a gentle smile, and with a few taps to the Sheikah slate, the two are floating, the only sensation Connor can properly identify being that of Link’s hand in his. Link’s hand is soft, but calloused. This is the hand of a man who has fought his entire life, the hand of a man more at home with a sword in his hand.

Connor is envious that Link knows where his place is.

It’s almost jarring when his feet touch the ground moments later, and every sensation in his body is back, along with a slight unease. Teleportation. The concept feels as though it should be novel to him, and yet… Connor does not feel it is unusual. It feels almost normal. Clearly, Link shares this feeling.

They’re back at the first shrine, the one by the pond where the fish swim. Connor watches them for a moment, before Link’s hand leaves his, and he knows it’s time to go. It’s time to find the old man. It’s time to learn the truth. Connor’s body feels heavy and light all at once as he walks towards the temple.

The overgrown ruins are eerily beautiful, and tragic. Connor watches flowers growing between cracked stone pathways bob and weave in the breeze. The corpses of guardians lie sprawled across courtyards and low stone walls. Connor lays a hand on the leg of a guardian that sits still and mossy on the flagstones. The ridges of the metal feel familiar somehow. He brushes fingers across each ridge, stares into the glassy lens making up the eye.

And then he is staring at the world through that lens, as guardians fight guardians in the temple courtyard. As each guardian begins to turn against their human masters, one by one. As unarmed temple goers scream and burn in the blasts from glass eyes. A blast through a wall, a woman screaming with fury and clutching a child to her breast even as mechanical death approaches her.

Connor steps away from the machine as if it has burned him. He stares around him in horror. There’s where the blast tore through layers of stone, where the walls crumbled as powerful legs brought mechanical monsters onto sacred ground. A spot where pale pink and white flowers blossom, where once the woman with her child had fallen, had died. He crouches to brush a finger across their petals. Anemone. He does not know why he knows the name of these flowers, but he can remember it as though he has always known.

Link is suddenly beside him with worry in his eyes and across his face. Connor shakes his head and whispers, “I’m okay.”

He follows Link more closely as they enter the main chamber of the statues. A large statue of a winged woman towers over them, surrounded by a ring of smaller, less detailed statues of the same woman. Though moss has taken its place over her wings and shoulders like a dusting of green snow, she is otherwise untouched by the passage of time. He watches as Link kneels before her, and the sunlight filters through a hole in the ceiling as if shining a halo over her head.

Link holds his hands out to her, as though to take her outstretched palms of stone. As though falling from the heavens into her hands, a shining orb of blue-green light descends to hover between outstretched palms, and then further into Link’s arms. The blond embraces it like an old friend, and he glows with that same, beautiful light, for just a single moment before the sun shifts just enough for the light over the stone angels to fade away. When Link stands, there is something ever so slightly different about him. Something more steady and certain.

The old man calls to them from the roof, much to Connor’s dismay. He reluctantly climbs an old, but blessedly sturdy ladder, only to come face to face with the crumbling rooftop. There are holes to either side of his perch on a blessedly sturdy wall, and he is extremely cautious as he makes his way towards the comparative safety of an old structure that he believes once held a large bell.

The old man is waiting for them, a smile on his face. Link climbs into the small structure with ease. Connor is uneasy, but not unsteady. A place where the walls crumble draws Connor’s gaze for a moment, before he tears it away to zone in on the old man.

“Well done, young ones,” the old man says, with a small chuckle, almost sad. The blue-green flames dance and flicker about him, his body fading to a similar colour at the edges, becoming less tangible. “Now then...the time has come to show you who I truly am.”

“Then show us,” Connor hisses. He’s on edge, uneasy. He doesn’t like this.

“I was King Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule.” There’s something heavy and final to the words. To the use of the past tense. It’s like a punch to Connor’s gut. “I was… the last leader of Hyrule. A kingdom which no longer exists.”

“Was?” A hint of desperation creeps into Connor’s voice, into his heart, and yet he does not know why. “What do you mean?”

The light around the old man- Rhoam, his name is Rhoam- becomes unbearable. Connor shuts his eyes tight as the light begins to subside. He’s afraid of what he’ll see, but he opens them anyway. Rhoam hovers above the ground, the pale light a part of his very figure now. He bears a crown, and a clearly expensive set of clothes, a sharp contrast to the threadbare fabric clinging to Connor and Link. White hair flows in a mane down his back, and Rhoam’s face bears the look of a man who has lost something important.

“The Great Calamity was merciless.” Rhoam’s voice is solemn, and Connor does not dare speak over it. “It devastated everything in its path.”

“100 years ago,” Connor breathes. He doesn’t remember, but… he and Link have been asleep 100 years. It only makes sense. “The Great Calamity… something happened to me and Link. Something that only the Shrine of Resurrection could fix.”

Rhoam nods solemnly. “It was during the Great Calamity that my life was taken away from me. Since that time, I have remained here, in spirit form.” He drifts towards the window, the ghostly flames flickering and trailing after him. “I did not wish to overwhelm Link while his memory was so fragile. I thought it best to assume a temporary form. But there was one thing I could not predict…” The spirit turns to face Connor. “You.”

“I wasn’t supposed to be here. I wasn’t supposed to be placed in the Shrine of Resurrection alongside Link.”

“You were not,” Rhoam confirms. “I cannot say why you were. I have no knowledge of that. However, you awoke in the same situation as Link.” He sighs. “I think you are ready. Both of you.”

“For what?” Connor asks, pleads, desperate to know something, _anything_.

“Ready to hear what happened 100 years ago.”


End file.
